VE Day: Daphne Oram, the BBC, and the First Turntablist Under Fire
In the 1930s and ’40s, jobs in sound engineering were off-limits to women. But when World War II broke out, and the BBC’s top technicians were called up to serve, Daphne Oram stepped in to fill the gap.
She brought with her one skill that no one else at the BBC had.
During the Blitz, the BBC broadcast live concerts—often dance band performances from London—in open defiance of Hitler. People across Britain would tune in, sometimes even dancing along in their kitchens. Venues like the Royal Albert Hall and Alexandra Palace were regular sites for these wartime broadcasts.
But there was a problem: air raids. German bombing raids frequently interrupted the concerts. The BBC, ever the showbiz pros, didn’t just cut the feed or tell the truth. Instead, they had a plan. For every song on the programme, a 78rpm record was kept ready. If a raid forced the band and audience to flee to the shelters, a technician would seamlessly switch from live broadcast to recorded version—without listeners at home suspecting a thing. The show would go on... from a turntable.
Pulling that off required an extraordinary technical skill: live beat-matching between an orchestra and a pile of shellac 78s. Most modern DJs would struggle with it even using Technics decks.
Daphne Oram could do it. In fact, she was the only person at the BBC who could. Over and over, she kept the music going, beat-matching live performances to pre-recorded discs—all while bombs fell on London.
While others ran for cover, Daphne stayed behind with a couple of colleagues, DJing through the air raids until the all-clear sounded.
A pioneering sound engineer, a wartime innovator, and quite possibly the first ever turntablist—doing it under enemy fire made it all the more remarkable.
Post War Daphne Oram became the founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and gave Delia Derbyshire her first job before leaving the BBC to become an avant garde composer and music theoretician. And combat DJ.